


Sharing the Darkness

by fancyasscheeseballs (girlattherockshow)



Series: An Unlikely Love: Rafael & Anna [8]
Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst, Barba's suspension, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, In which Rafael and Anna learn they aren't alone, i like to hurt my characters, relationships take work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:21:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22330012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlattherockshow/pseuds/fancyasscheeseballs
Summary: Rafael has just been suspended for a month without pay because of a very unwise decision he made years ago. He comes home ready to face the music for not telling Anna about it sooner. But she surprises him -- not just with compassion but with a secret of her own.
Relationships: Rafael Barba/Original Character(s), Rafael Barba/Original Female Character(s)
Series: An Unlikely Love: Rafael & Anna [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1597711
Kudos: 16





	Sharing the Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Well, guess what? I finished it after all! Please enjoy this look into Anna’s life before New York. Also, we’re going to pretend that Rafael’s suspension happens in May 2014 
> 
> Prompt #54 from 200 Prompts from @drink-it-write-it (“It’s me and you against the world, remember?”)
> 
> Song: A Safe Place to Land by Sara Bareilles and John Legend

He should have gone straight home after his meeting with Jack McCoy, but Rafael couldn’t bring himself to face reality quite yet. So, instead, he headed to his favorite watering hole. Tucked away in between a bodega and a bookstore, it was one of the few places he knew he wouldn’t run into any lawyers he knew. He sunk onto a chair at the bar, tossed his coat over the back of it, and ordered a glass of scotch—a double, neat. He needed it.

His phone pinged with Anna’s text tone. He pulled it from his pocket. _Could you pick up some milk on the way home, please? I just used the last of it for my cereal._

Ordinarily he would have replied to her text with a playful comment about how breakfast was a few hours ago, not one o’clock in the afternoon, but he just didn’t have it in him. He typed out a quick confirmation and tucked his phone away again. He stared into the glass of scotch that had just been placed in front of him; maybe if he looked long enough, he could see his future in the liquid. Maybe life would make sense again.

“So what happened?” The familiar voice didn’t even startle him. Olivia climbed into the seat next to him and signaled the bartender for a glass of wine.

He sighed. “Suspension. Four weeks, without pay.”

Her eyes went wide, and she put a hand on his shoulder. “Oh, Rafa, I’m so sorry. I feel like this is partly my fault. If I hadn’t asked you for the warrants—”

“Hey,” he said, turning to her. “Stop that. You asked me to do my job. You didn’t ask me to pay off a witness knowing she was going to buy drugs, and you certainly didn’t ask me to send her daughter money every month as some kind of penance.”

She nodded sadly. “At least it’s only a suspension. It could have gone much worse.”

He laughed ruefully. “Yeah, except now I have to go home and tell my girlfriend, with whom I have only recently moved in, that I’m essentially unemployed for a month, and, more importantly, _why_.”

“Is it a financial thing? Because if it is, you know I—”

He shook his head. “Don’t be silly. First off, it’s not. I have enough in savings to last me six months if I needed it. If I got really desperate, I could draw from my retirement fund. But it’s not that. And even if it were, I wouldn’t let you help me. I dug this hole. It’s mine to climb out of.”

“And you don’t think Anna will want to help you?”

“It’s not that she won’t want to. But like I said, I haven’t even told her about…all of it.” He sighed deeply. “I was hoping it would just be a stern talking-to, I guess. I was hoping she wouldn’t have to know.”

She blanched. “Well, I won’t lie, that’s…not good.”

“I know,” he replied. “I don’t know how to begin to explain it to her. Not just the situation itself, but why I didn’t tell her in the first place.”

She sipped her wine. “You know, Anna is a strong woman. She’s been through a lot worse than this. I think she may surprise you.”

“I hope so, but I’m not holding my breath.” He dipped his head and drained the entire glass in one gulp. “Time to go face the music, I guess.”

She caught him by the arm as he started to leave. “You know you can stop by the squad room anytime you need to talk, right? You might be banned from your office, but mine is always open.”

He had the overwhelming urge to hug her, but instead, he opted for a smile and a pat on the hand. “Thank you, Liv.”

* * *

“Anna? You home?”

Rafael entered the apartment he and Anna had moved into just a few months ago, almost hoping she had gone out for the milk herself. He wanted a few more minutes to psych himself up for this conversation. They were just coming off of a fight a month earlier, after which Anna had disappeared to Nashville for a week. That had been a stress fight—both of them had contributed to it—but this was entirely his doing. He wasn’t sure she would be as forgiving this time.

“In the office, babe,” Anna called.

He set his briefcase down and loosened his tie as he walked down the hall. He entered the office to find her stretched out in the double papasan in the corner of the room by the window, the last of the evening light streaming in. Her contracts book was in her lap and she had a highlighter between her teeth while she marked something in the book with a pen. Her Fordham Law sweatshirt gave him just the slightest view of her collarbone and her black leggings accentuated the length of her legs. She looked unbelievably sexy and he was even more pissed at himself—if he didn’t have to have this conversation with her, he would have been trying to lure her away from that book.

“Hi, sweetheart,” he said, kissing her on the head.

She put the pen behind her ear and switched to the highlighter. “You never call me pet names in English. Did you suddenly forget you speak Spanish?”

He laughed. “Can’t a guy change it up?”

“Not _my_ guy,” she smirked. “You’re home early. Everything okay?”

It was now or never, he supposed. “I…need to talk to you about something.”

Something about his voice was very worrisome. She set her book aside and sat up, cross-legged. “Okay, I’m listening.”

He shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “Can we go sit on the couch?”

“Of course.” He helped her out of the papasan, and they went into the living room to the couch. “Okay,” she said, now very concerned. “Before you start, is this about us?”

He shook his head emphatically. “No, not at all. At least, what I want to talk to you about has nothing to do with our relationship. But it does affect us, I guess.”

Her concern shifted. “Oh, God, is your mom okay?”

“She’s fine,” he said, although that reminded him that he would have to have this same conversation with his mother eventually, which would be a real treat. “Just—let me get this out.”

“Sorry. Go on.”

He rubbed his eyes. “Okay, this isn’t easy for me to talk about, so just let me get through it and then you can respond however you’d like.”

“Okay.”

“You remember that case against David Willard? The guy who ran that data mining company—”

“I remember. They got him to take a plea, right?”

“Yeah. He’s going away for a long time for killing his girlfriend.” He ran a hand through his hair. “But before they arrested him, he blackmailed a whole bunch of people associated with the case; dug up information on them and threatened to disclose it publicly. He got one of Fin’s forensic experts first. Then, when Olivia asked me for warrants…he hit me.” He watched for any change in Anna’s expression but didn’t see anything. “He—I—he threatened to disclose something that wasn’t true, but that would have looked bad. It’s not going to come out since he got arrested, but…”

She reached over and grabbed his hand. “What is it, Raf? What could you have possibly done that would be that bad?”

He couldn’t even look her in the eye as he told the rest of the story. He told her about Marianna Abreu, a witness in a case against a man who raped and murdered two women. He told her that on the day of the trial, she showed up strung out and he gave her money knowing she would buy drugs with it.

“She got on the stand and buried the guy,” he said. “Eight hours later, she overdosed. And she had a ten-year-old daughter, Ashtonja. She and her grandmother are broke. I send money every month to help out. I’ve been doing it for years now. I guess it’s my way of assuaging my guilt.”

Anna stared at him, flabbergasted. “You—wait—you send money to this woman’s daughter and her grandmother?”

“That’s what I’m telling you, yes.”

“And why would Willard think that that would be worth disclosing to—” The realization hit Anna like a ton of bricks to the face. “Oh my God.”

He had a hard time even vocalizing the implications. “You can imagine how it would look for an assistant district attorney—especially one who prosecutes sex crimes—to be sending money to a ten-year-old every month.”

“Yeah, that would be bad.” She furrowed her brow. “Wait, why are you telling me this now? If it’s not going to come out after all…”

Finally, he forced himself to look her in the eyes. “I had to tell the D.A. about it. When I thought it might come out, I thought it was better to go to him myself. I talked to him last week, and he needed some time to figure out an appropriate response.”

With a calm voice, she asked, “And did he?”

He took a deep breath. “I had a meeting with him this morning. It didn’t go well. It could have been worse, but it’s not great, either. He suspended me for a month, without pay.” She inhaled sharply and tilted her head toward the ceiling for a moment. Then she looked down at the couch, where their hands were joined. He supposed she was taking a minute to process all of this. He couldn’t really blame her. It was a lot to take in. But he couldn’t read her face. “Please, Anna, say something. Anything. Swear at me. Yell at me if you want to. Just…say something.”

“I have questions.”

“I’ll answer anything that I legally can.”

“You’ve been doing this presumably longer than you and I have been together, right? Sending her money, I mean?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s been five years now.”

“And you planned to continue sending her money?”

He nodded. “I did.”

“And when did you plan to tell me about this?” It wasn’t an accusation, but she was clearly very serious.

He sighed. “I don’t know, Anna. I honestly don’t. I guess I compartmentalized it. I figured it had no bearing on my ability to contribute here, and it’s not like I have a relationship with the family. I just send money, help out with things like groceries or the electric bill.”

She swallowed hard. “Ashtonja’s mother. You said you knew she would buy the drugs?”

“I did. And I know, I know what you’re thinking.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What am I thinking?”

He tried, but he couldn’t stop the tears from falling. “You’re thinking that I am a terrible person for doing that. I put my case over a human life. I knew I was contributing to her habit. I knew it was wrong, and I did it anyway. But”—his voice cracked—“I’d do it again. The guy she put away was evil, Anna. He deserved what he got, and if I’d had any other way to put him in prison, I would have used it, I swear I would have. But I was desperate…”

He was crying by then. It wasn’t the suspension. It wasn’t his own pride. It was the realization hitting him all over again that he had orphaned a little girl. And all he wanted was for someone to absolve him of that, but he knew absolution wasn’t forthcoming. There was nothing for him to do but live with the guilt. And now _that_ guilt was compounded by the guilt of not having told the person he loved most in the world about the entire, sordid affair until he was forced to.

Suddenly, he felt a pair of arms wrap around him and he inhaled the scent of Anna’s perfume. She didn’t say anything; she just held onto him. He clung to her, grasping at the back of her sweatshirt, her hair, anywhere he could put his hands. She put her chin on top of his head and ran a hand over his hair, rocking him against her until he began to soothe.

“I wasn’t thinking that,” she finally said.

He lifted his head from her shoulder, and she could see the misery in his eyes. “What?”

“You said you knew what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking any of what you said.” She reached behind herself and grabbed a tissue. “I don’t think you’re a terrible person.”

He took the tissue from her hand and wiped at his eyes and nose. “How could you not? I killed a woman. How could you look at me as anything but a terrible person?”

Anna shook her head. “Rafael, you’re right when you say that it was wrong to do what you did. But you didn’t kill her. You didn’t force her to go buy drugs with that money. You may have known with ninety-nine percent certainty that she would, but that doesn’t mean you controlled even one percent of what she did. And you know what? She probably would have gotten the money from somewhere else if you hadn’t given it to her. She knew the risks. I know I sound harsh, and I have all the sympathy in the world for addicts, but…”

“But what?”

She sighed. “Look, let’s just say I’ve been where you are.”

He stared at her. “What are you talking about? How could you possibly—”

“It’s not something we need to discuss right now,” she said. “Right now, we need to focus on you and this situation we’re in. And the first thing we need—the first thing you need—is for you to realize that you didn’t cause this. And you did what you could to atone for it. That’s all you can do. You’ve clearly spent enough time being angry at yourself. You don’t need me to be angry with you too.”

His heart ached. “Anna…”

“And as for this suspension? Well, it sucks. It sucks a lot. But there’s no point in bemoaning that fact.” She shrugged. “Remember what you just said last month? Soulmates are soulmates because they choose each other even if life makes love hard?”

He fell to pieces again. He had not expected this—Anna was one of the kindest, most understanding people he knew, but he had not expected her to be _this_ kind or understanding. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t deserve—”

“If you say you don’t deserve me, I swear I will make a self-loathing jar and make you put a quarter in it.” That actually made him smile for the first time all day. She squeezed his hand. “Good. A smile.”

“Can you just—can you tell me why you’re being so understanding? This is a big thing I kept from you, and I was expecting you to be…angry, I guess.”

“It’s me and you against the world, remember?” She took his hand. “Life isn’t always going to be easy on us, Rafael. That’s why we have each other. When one of us is hurting, the other one does what they can to lessen some of that pain. It’s not just my life or your life. It’s our life, together—all of it, the good and bad.”

He stared at her for a moment. “If that’s true,” he began, “then will you please tell me how you know where I am? If we’re in this together like you say, then I want to know how that’s possible.”

She adjusted her sweatshirt from where he had shifted it. “I hate when you make decent arguments.”

He shook his head. “I’m not trying to argue. I just—maybe you could help me figure out how to process—I don’t know, I’m not making much sense, am I?”

This wasn’t something she had planned to get into when she woke up that morning, but she also realized that right now, what Rafael needed was to feel less alone. If this is what it would take to accomplish that, then to her, it was a small sacrifice. Besides, he would need to find out someday anyway. “There’s something you don’t know about me, Rafael.”

Now it was his turn to look worried. “If you tell me you have a habit—”

She laughed, just happy that he made a joke. “You know that’s ridiculous. Just listen to me for a minute.” She inhaled deeply. “I—I know I’ve told you before that I’m an only child.”

“Right…”

“Well,” she said, her voice shaky, “I lied.”

His eyes widened. “I—what?”

“I lied,” she repeated. “I have an older brother. He’s twenty-seven. His name is Jacob, but I called him Jakey. I was the only one allowed to do that. But I don’t—I don’t call him anything now.”

“You’re not on speaking terms?”

She shook her head. “It’s not that we don’t speak. It’s that we—we _can’t_.”

It took him a moment, but when Rafael looked into Anna’s eyes, he saw unspeakable pain behind them. “Oh, Anna…” He took her into his arms and felt her tears on his shirt. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m sorry. I was going to tell you someday. There’s just never a good time to bring this kind of thing up. And I didn’t want to tell you earlier, because I didn’t want to make this about me.”

“If you don’t want to talk about what happened—”

Anna pulled away from him and shook her head. “No. It’s—it’s right that you know. I want to tell you.”

He took her hand. “Only if you’re sure.”

“I am,” she said, nodding. “I know that people always say their siblings are their best friends, but Jakey really _was_ my best friend, from the time I was old enough to know what a best friend was. Most older brothers wouldn’t want their kid sister hanging around them all the time, but Jakey never made me feel like I was a nuisance. I think maybe it helped that he wasn’t that much older than me. At least, that’s how it was until he got to college.”

Rafael’s face was stoic. “What happened?”

She sighed sadly. “Some people adjust really well to college. And some people, they just—it wasn’t overnight, you know? He did really well his first year. But when he went back the second year, things just fell apart. I think he was depressed and very lonely. He went to school in Santa Barbara, so he was a long way from home. But it started with the drinking, and then it progressed to other things.”

“Drugs?”

She nodded. “He came home for Thanksgiving break that year and it was really obvious that something was going on. He looked different. At the time I didn’t know what it was. My parents knew, though. They’d seen it in the hospital before, you know? But obviously he wasn’t going to admit it to us.” She paused. “I remember wanting to go out with him—I don’t remember exactly where, probably for ice cream—and he ended up ditching me. I never found out where he went, but he came home high.”

This wasn’t at all a surprise to Rafael, sadly. It sounded very much like the stories of many of his childhood friends. Anna’s family was affluent, though—it struck him how substance abuse crossed socioeconomic lines and affected families very similarly. “How long did this go on?”

“Years. He ended up dropping out of college, unsurprisingly. He would disappear for weeks at a time and then come stumbling into the house unannounced, usually strung out. Once in a while, we would get Sober Jakey back—just long enough to make us think he was cleaning up. But then something would happen—he’d lose a job, there would be some girl, any excuse to get high.”

He rubbed his thumb over the top of her hand. “How did your parents react?”

“They tried for a long time to help him clean up. They used some of their medical connections and got him into a really good rehab center. But you know what they say, you can’t make someone stop unless they’re ready to. He was just never ready. So they cut him off.” She was crying softly. “It was so painful for them, Raf. He was their son, their first born. But they knew they had to do it, because they were enabling him.”

He understood completely. “How old were you when they did that?”

“This was when I was twenty-one, maybe. And now I understand why my parents did what they did. But back then, I was so angry with them. I thought they were abandoning him, and I refused to go along with it.” She looked at him like he had looked at her earlier. “He was my brother, Raf. He was my best friend. So when he would show up at my apartment asking for help—a place to stay overnight, or, more often, money—I would do what I could. I thought I was doing the right thing. But one night…one night, he showed up at my apartment after being gone for, like, six months. I was so relieved to see him, and he looked good. It seemed like he was finally, finally getting his life together. We talked all night. And when I went to bed, he was on the couch, reading a book.”

“And the next day?”

She took her hand back from him and wrapped her arms around herself. “The next day, I had to go to work, and I left him some money to go get breakfast.” She looked up at him with huge, watery eyes.

Rafael hesitated. “He didn’t get breakfast, did he?”

And that was when it happened. She collapsed into his arms, crying harder than he’d seen in their entire relationship—harder than when she was on the witness stand, even. But he was there to catch her.

“It was horrible. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t used in the past, but—but he injected too much at once, and”—she sobbed against his shoulder—“I _know_ what I said to you about it not being your fault, I know I’m a huge hypocrite, but all I can think is, if I’d just listened to my parents, if I’d cut him off, if I hadn’t been so fucking selfish—”

“Hey,” he said, pulling her back from her place against his chest. “You are _not_ selfish. You’re the least selfish person I know. What did you just tell me not twenty minutes ago? You didn’t make that choice for him.”

She shook her head. “But I should have known. I should have known what he would do. I just—I didn’t want to believe it. He looked so good when he showed up.”

He cocked his head and gave her a sad smile. “Maybe you just wanted to believe that you had your brother back. You wanted to believe you had Jakey again.”

Despite his intention, she only cried harder. So, instead of trying to comfort her with words, he opted to simply hold her, just as she had held him. After a few minutes, she began to calm down, and sat back up, wiping her eyes with her hands.

“I’m sorry, Raf,” she said, hiding her face from him. “I told you, I didn’t mean to make this about me.”

Something about the way she said that caused a light to go on in his head. “You didn’t. But I think you were wrong earlier.”

She ran a hand through her hair, pushing it away from her face. “Wrong about what?”

He brought his legs up onto the couch and pulled her toward him, settling her between his bent knees, her back against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and leaned his head forward, just enough so that she could clearly hear him when he spoke. This was new for her; Rafael was always very physically affectionate, but this was different. It wasn’t sexual or romantic. It was comfortable, peaceful, calming. She felt, in a word, safe.

“Earlier, when you said that when one of us is hurting, the other one will be there to lessen the pain, you were wrong,” he said.

She raised her eyebrows, although he couldn’t see it. “But Raf, you did lessen my pain,” she said. “I haven’t told anyone about Jakey since—well, ever. It was painful, but it—it feels better to have told you. I don’t feel so alone anymore.”

He smiled against her neck. “Exactly. And neither do I.”

She turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“Anna, when you shared that with me, it was like I felt like someone understood. Like I finally had someone I could tell who would understand the pain I was in. And now, you feel like someone shares your pain too.”

“Yes. But what does that have to do with—”

“It’s not about one of us lessening the other person’s pain, sweetheart.” As much as she loved his Spanish names for her, something about his use of this one made her heart swell. “It’s about _sharing_ each other’s pain, so that we don’t feel so alone in it. We can’t take it away, but we can help each other carry it.”

She had to bite her lip to keep from crying again. “I—I’ve never been so glad to admit I was wrong,” she finally said, trying to lighten the mood. “Mark it on the calendar.”

He tightened his grip around her waist. “Thank you for sharing yourself with me, Anna. You don’t know how much it means to me that you’re able to do that.”

She leaned her head back so she could kiss him. “It’s only because you’ve made it safe for me to do that.”

He dipped his head down to hers and returned her kiss, sweet and soft. After he pulled back, he saw that she looked like herself again. The lines in her face had disappeared and she looked like his Anna again. Only there was a question in her eyes.

“What’s that look about?” he asked.

“Well,” she sighed, “I was just thinking…you’ve got all this time off now. And I don’t know your finances, but—”

He knew exactly where this conversation was headed. “Where were you thinking of going?”

She smiled at how well he knew her. “I just—talking about this—I haven’t seen my parents since before we started seeing each other. You think you might be up to visiting my family?”

He gave her that silly half-smile which she knew meant he’d already agreed to it before saying a word. “Of course,” he said. “I mean, you shared yourself with me, but I should also thank the people who shared you with the world.”


End file.
